This was a rather forgettable episode of Survivor, as nothing super significant happened and we voted out the game's most boring player, perhaps in the history of the show. Basically we just killed off an episode to get to the merge. While we've had a pretty boring pre-merge game, I think we're in for a crazy, unpredictable post-merge. But let's not bury the lead. We'll get to previewing the merge. But first let's recap this episode and talk about Bikals decision to vote out Julia.
With the merge on the horizons, players are preparing themselves and starting to think about what they'll do once they get there. The plan has been for all the Favorites to get together and pick off the Fans one by one by one at the merge and then game on and face each other. However, the Phillip-Corinne conflict has escalated things and might have sped-up the team of Favorites turning on each other. Over on the other side of the beach, Malcolm has talked about forming an alliance with the other three bros on the tribe- Reynold, Eddie and Erik. His idea being that the fit, young guys are the ones that are always targeted at the merge and so it would make sense for the best four challenge competitors to join forces so that they can help each other out. Malcolm and Eddie also possess the two hidden immunity idols planted in the game. So this is really like a dream team sorta thing. It's like Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and LeBron James joining forces in Miami to form an ultra-team. However I think this is a lot tougher to do in this case.
It's going to be very hard for Malcolm to put all this together. If the new Gota tribe's plan was for them all to stick together, then this would be a great plan because then they would already have the numbers with them. But with this plan for the big four to stick together, they need to add two or three more to have a majority. But no one's going to want to jump in and be on the bottom of this alliance. So this is really idealistic. Right now the plan is for all the Favorites to get back together and if Malcolm were to go against that, he could be targeted earlier than he had hoped and if he got to the end, he would have people mad at him for betraying them. If it does work out for Malcolm, it could be a brilliant move, however. Then he would be going from the middle of an eight-person alliance to the top of an alliance. But right now it's really iffy.
In the challenges, Bikal got blown out again and lost reward and immunity. The big story of the night was the decision the Favorites had to make of who were they going to vote out: Michael or Julia? The way Phillip has been talking about his game, I'm surprised he didn't bring a Red Sox hat with him out on the island because he has tried so hard to replicate Boston Rob's game on his season, Survivor: Redemption Island. He tried to get Julia to join his alliance, and then she went and talked to Dawn and targeted Phillip. Then Dawn told Phillip about it and Julia became Phillip's number one target. His plan was for the Favorites to split the votes between the two, in case an idol was played, and then vote out Julia. Corinne was frustrated by this and was being rather unreasonable, saying that they couldn't put any votes on Mike. Ever since the new tribes were formed she has referred to Mike as "the gay" and talked about how much she loves gay men. She's been spending the most time with him and become very close to him. She's made it very clear to everyone that she wants Phillip out and she seems to have put herself at the bottom of the Favorites alliance. Anyway, she said they couldn't put any votes on Michael, even though he wasn't going anywhere. This angered Phillip and Phillip noticed how close she was getting to him, so he tried to change the plan to voting Mike out. I think that would have been the best move for the tribe. Instead, they voted out Julia, the most boring player ever. Seriously, I kept forgetting her name throughout her time on the show, she was that boring and irrelevant.
It would have been best for the Favorites to vote out Mike, who has been a strong competitor in challenges and has been playing more strategic than Julia has. Mike's close with Corinne, who could try to stir things up and flip at the merge, and she'll have that vote with her no matter what she does. Although, Corinne may have single-handedly destroyed her game in the past two episodes.
Other than that, there wasn't much in this episode. Really all it has done is get us ready for the merge. I think we're in a great spot to merge right now because anything could happen in the next tribal council. I honestly have no idea who's going home next. The other great thing is no one is in a great spot right now. No one is clearly winning this game and is on top of everyone else. While the plan has been for the eight Favorites to take out the four Fans, I don't know if that will happen this week. We've seen tribes fall apart at the merge. Perhaps it's when a tribe is much bigger than the other when they merge and they have more conflict, rather than a tight group of six sticking together. For example last season, instead of alpha male Pete trying to keep his tribe of eight Tandang members tight, he did his best to vote out RC and alienate his two key members, Lisa Whelchel and Mike Skupin, he needed to get to the end, which ultimately led to his downfall. We could see Phillip and Corinne targeting each other and that backfiring on one of the two. Or we could see one of the Favorites trying to blindside another, which could be successful or it could lead to that person going home. I guess what I'm saying is that we are in store for a wild post-merge game, and it's going to be very exciting to see what will happen in the coming episodes. Depending on how much time I have tomorrow, I might write a merge preview for the individual game of the show, but if I don't you'll hear from me soon and maybe I can do somewhat of a merge recap/preview for things to come next week.
Thanks for reading, comment and let me know what you think, or hit me up on Twitter @vellvita7.
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